woah. really?

[certainthings]

Dear People Who Make Icons,

I just read this "It ususally doesn't take that long for me to make an icon ( 20 -30 minutes) unless I'm trying to get text on it" in a post.

Is this an average thing? Because if an icon isn't coming together for me in about a minute, I scrap it. I cannot imagine spending that kind of time on an icon.

Sincerely,
A person who sometimes makes icons

Comments

[mrbig1316.livejournal.com]

I've taken hours on one icon before.

:/

Because I'm picky.

[ignited.livejournal.com]

It used to take me that long when I made icons as a regular thing (made them really big at first so it was like a collage, then I shrunk them down) but nowadays it's like 5 minutes. Mostly because I'm too lazy to work on it any longer now.

[allyoops.livejournal.com]

I've done icons in half an hour, sometimes an hour, but only if it's something complicated I really want to try and pull off (ie something I've never done before and I try try try until I get it done), but usually it takes a minute or five at the most. Five if there's text, because I'm totally sucky at teh text.

I can't stand taking too long on any one icon. I get impatient.

[devidarkwolf.livejournal.com]

Depends. I never time myself, but I take maybe 5 - 15 minutes on one icon. But I don't do much except for mess with curves, colour, saturation, and other less complicated stuff.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

*blinks* Wow. That is ... Okay, I don't have words for what that is.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Five minutes seems reasonable, I think there's probably been a couple of times when I've spent that amount of time on one but not often enough to remember exactly.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Okay. And yeah, I suck ass at text which is why I don't really use it ever.

And randomly, I saw Ando (or technically the actor) on a McDonald's commercial yesterday. *nods*

Who is this Kevin mentioned on your icon?

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

*nods* That's pretty much what I do to my icons too.

[allyoops.livejournal.com]

Oh Ando, you'd pimp the devil if the devil payed, huh? *sad face*

Kevin is Kevin Rudd, the Australian opposition leader. Our elections are coming up soon, so Bobby and Ando kindly agreed to pimp my political preference! They're such gentlemen! ♥

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Is this Kevin guy less of a Bush lapdog than Howard is? Unless of course you like Howard and then I uhm, didn't say anything!

That is really generous of Bobby and Ando.

[merihn.livejournal.com]

I think technically Rudd is Howards lapdog :(

[mrbig1316.livejournal.com]

They have to look *JUST* Right. And there are so many that I make that never see the light of day.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

Oh. Oh, my.

[frala.livejournal.com]

Ive spent shameful amounts of time on one icon before it depends on how much i have to do

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I understand, I'm just real impatient when it comes to them looking just right.

[mrbig1316.livejournal.com]

Hee! So am I! I'm a Gemini. We bore easily.

[rustydog.livejournal.com]

A very simple icon will probably take me five to ten minutes. The more complicated ones, where I have to do a lot with effects to get it to look the way I want, can take me 40 minutes or an hour, even if they don't end up looking complicated. If it has text, definitely on the higher end. Last night I made 8 relatively simple text-only icons, and by simple I mean really not up to the standards I prefer, and it took me 1 1/2 hours. That's why on the rare occasions I post a batch of icons, they never have more than about 10 icons.

Then again, if I was making icons all the time, I would probably have a collection of techniques and effects I used all the time and could execute pretty fast, and do the same thing with the whole batch, and it wouldn't take as long. Part of my problem is that I almost never make two icons the same way.

[allyoops.livejournal.com]

Very much less! Hopefully this year it's out with the lapdog and in with the ...much less lappy dog. I dunno! I'm a cat person! :D

Bobby and Ando are my heroes.

[bitter-crimson.livejournal.com]

I'd say on average I spend 45 minutes on an icon. Sometimes they might be quicker (10-15 minutes) and sometimes much longer (hours upon hours). The length depends on what's contained in the icon itself, usually. A lot of my icons are manips, so while making the "icon" I'm actually making the manip as well. Then there's animated icons. Or the times I go berserk because I have to have JUST THE RIGHT FONT. Very few of my icons are plain, with no text/animation/etc. And even then, I get kinda anal about cropping and all that. Heh, this is probably why I generally only make icons for myself. It's too hard to make lots of them for other people, and I think most people don't like my icon style anyway.

(This icon, for example, took around 45 minutes, I think. Tons of time going through source material for the perfect panel, then lots of time editing the text by C/P-ing letters from other panels of the comic, plus C/P-ing background for the speech bubble so it wouldn't be too bright white, since then it wouldn't look like an authentic comic scan. And yadda yadda. I'm very anal.)

[merihn.livejournal.com]

I dunno... I don't really get much into politics... which is silly sometimes, cos I should care about whats going on... but from what I've seen Rudd is following in Howards footsteps.

[certainthings.livejournal.com]

I'm starting to think I'm a slacker.

[frala.livejournal.com]

nooo just better! *nods*

[punnky-kitty.livejournal.com]

If I'm trying a new technique or I'm just feeling creative.. I can sit and make icons for hours. HOURS. o_0
After that, I'll save the .psd and future icons take 10-30 minutes screwing around.

[katysam.livejournal.com]

Some icons take longer than others but I don't think I've ever spent more than 10 minutes on a single icon (without text).

If I add text, it can take a ridiculous amount of time on top of that to complete it. But I think that's due to the ridiculous amount of fonts I have accumulated. I'm a font junkie.

The most time consuming part of iconing, besides finding the perfect text, is making the screen caps. Or at least it is for me. I find that part a part terribly tedious and admire those people who post screen caps covering each episode. I wonder if they have a magic 'screen cap' program they use.

[katysam.livejournal.com]

Great icon. I didn't think it was possible to love Bobby or Ando more than I already did but, yeah. :)